Multiparty conferencing allows participants from multiple locations to collaborate. For example, participants from multiple geographic locations can join a conference meeting and communicate with each other to discuss issues, share ideas, etc. These collaborative sessions may include one or two-way audio transmissions, video transmission, or other data supporting tools that support the sharing of content presented by one participant to other participants. Thus, conference meetings can simulate in-person interactions between people.
A conferencing session is typically established by an enterprise or provider of conferencing services within an enterprise network or other private network. However, the resources required for private-network conferencing requires large costs and investments with respect to private network bandwidth and equipment within the private network.
Switched or cloud-based conferencing solutions involves the use of public networks and may be more cost effective because the hardware, application, and bandwidth costs may be covered by the conferencing provider and an enterprise may pay for what is actually used versus needing to pay for even idle time in private-network conferencing. Furthermore, cloud-based conferencing solutions are more easily scalable. However, deploying conference resources in a cloud environment that uses public networks introduces additional security risks.